Types and Classification of Disabilities

Types and Classification of Disabilities

There are various types and classification of physical and mental impairments that 
can reduce a person's ability to carry out their daily activities. These impairments can be termed as disability of the person to do his/her day to day activities. Disability can have other sub-categories, which include different  types of disabilities like:

• Physical/ Mobility disabilities

• Learning /Cognitive disabilities

• Spinal Cord Injury

• Hearing Impairment

• Vision Impairment

• Psychological

• Head Injuries

Physical/Mobility Disability

Physical disability is a condition in which a person's mobility, physical capacity, stamina and dexterity can affect.There are different types of physical disabilities:

• lower limb disability
• upper disability
• dexterity

Learning/cognitive Disability

Cognitive Disabilities are kind of impairment present in people who are suffering from dyslexia and various other learning difficulties and includes speech disorders.

Spinal cord Injury

This kind of injury mostly occurs due to severe accidents. The injury can be either complete or incomplete. In an incomplete injury, the messages conveyed by the spinal cord is not completely lost. Whereas a complete injury results in a total dis-functioning of the sensory organs.

Hearing Impairment

It includes people that are completely or partially deaf, (Deaf is the politically correct term for a person with hearing impairment). People who are partially deaf can often use hearing aids to assist their hearing. Deafness can be evident at birth or occur later in life from several biologic causes, for example Meningitis can damage the auditory nerve or the cochlea.

Deaf people use sign language as a means of communication. Hundreds of sign languages are in use around the world. In linguistic terms, sign languages are as rich and complex as any oral language, despite the common misconception that they are not "real languages"

Vision Impairment

There are hundreds of thousands of people that have minor to various serious vision disability or impairments. These injuries can also result into some serious problems or diseases like blindness and ocular trauma, to name a few.

Some of the common vision impairment includes scratched cornea, scratches on the sclera, diabetes related eye conditions, dry eyes and corneal graft.

Head Injury

A disability in the brain occurs due to a brain injury. The magnitude of the brain injury can range from mild, moderate and severe. There are two types of brain injuries:

• Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)
• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

ABI is not a hereditary type defect but is the degeneration that occurs after birth. The causes of such cases of injury are many and are mainly because of external forces applied to the body parts. TBI results in emotional dysfunctioning and behavioral disturbance.